Intercultural Learning: A pending challenge for the Vocational Technical Training Policy in Chile

Abstract

In Chile, despite the fact that the General Education Law No. 20,370 establishes the need to recognize and value people in their cultural specificity, worldview and history, the Educational Policy of Vocational Technical Training does not incorporate knowledge, methods or practices of the various indigenous cultures in the learning processes. To address this problem, educational institutions should move forward in assuming an intercultural educational approach, to ensure the recognition of social and cultural diversity. Using a documentary review at the international, national and local levels, the objective of this essay is to discuss the relevance of the intercultural educational approach as an alternative theoretical support to the monocultural approach that governs the current Vocational Technical Training Policy from the analysis of the Chilean case. To achieve this, we examine the professional technical policy, its laws and regulations in force, to account for how the current school curriculum and educational processes have configured a monocultural, homogenizing and decontextualized educational system. With this analysis, a proposal is presented to modify the policy in question, to incorporate a fifth strategic pillar: Intercultural Learning, based on four lines of action: learning centered on values; articulation of pedagogical approaches; bilingual intercultural learning; and, co-constructed learning. The conclusions suggest that our proposal would be an alternative way to the Western conception to learn and build knowledge, thus responding to the historical, social, cultural and individual demands of people and their territories.